Blaze
by a mountain of gideon's scones
Summary: "One day, you're going to walk into this laboratory and realise that you don't just come here for the science, for the knowledge; you come here for me as well. You come here because you want someone who's like you, someone who understands you, someone who completes you." / angsty, not strictly romance Clyrnin


I honesly have no idea where this came from; part of iv just came to me and i ended up forming this entire fic around that. I hope that it's not too bad!

I don't own anything

if you're going to favourite, please don't do so without reviewing

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i.

The whispers and the stares which all stop as soon as Claire looks at the perpetrators stop annoying Claire within a few days; they begin to fill her with a fear that she can't explain. Perhaps it's because it's because due to the recent events in the town, she's no longer the main focus of the negative attention; perhaps it's due to the fact that it's the vampires doing the whispering, not the humans. Still, her focus isn't the reason why she's scared; it _is_ the fact that she's scared.

She's managed to survive this town for almost two years now; she isn't going to let that survival rate nosedive just because the vampires don't want her around any longer.

"Oliver, can I have a word?" she asks hesitantly as she approaches the man standing in the shadowy corner of the room, her coffee tightly held in her hand. Myrnin's is still being prepared, so she thinks she's got enough time to chat to Oliver before gathering her boss's coffee. "It's quite important."

The man rolls his eyes but nods, acquiescing to her request, and he motions towards his office. "I know what you're going to want to discuss, and you're going to want to do it in private. _Believe_ me."

As Claire settles herself down into the seat opposite Oliver, the fear spikes within her to an even greater peak; she can't think of anything that she's done that would oppose the vampires so much that they would dare to plot against her when she's in _front_ of them, but perhaps it's something from a long time ago. Vampires seem to be creatures which hold grudges—just looking at Myrnin and Oliver proves that—and so there's a chance that they're merely getting her back for one of her many public displays of her majorly anti-vampire stance on life.

"What is it?" she urges as Oliver just sits there, looking at her with an amused expression. "Evidently you know, Oliver, or you wouldn't have let me come in here!" she's getting angry now, and this isn't the best idea, not in Oliver's territory. She's very rarely been in here—the only time she can clearly remember this room was when she came to bring him the picture of the book, and it was completely different then. Whereas it was set up to appear human back then, now it's a vampire's home—and not just a vampire, but a powerful one. Everything that can be old is, everything's expensive, and though it may just be because she knows who Oliver is, Claire gets a feeling of power from the room that she didn't get before.

A smile plays on Oliver's lips, which infuriates Claire; it's bitter, but full of a '_I know but you don't'_ attitude. "I do indeed know, but telling you isn't what I feel like doing at the current moment in time," he says coyly. "Mainly because you would most likely fire that drink at me—and this shirt is not designed to be dry cleaned—but also because there is a chance that you would commit multiple murders in order to hide what is being spread around the vampire population of Morganville."

Claire wants to shout out in frustration, but resists by digging her nails into the lid of the portable coffee cup. It cracks, causing a steady stream of steaming hot coffee to break out onto the lid, covering the pristine white plastic in brown stains. "Fine, you won't tell me because you're too scared that I'm going to kill you, I've got that," she replies coolly, no longer concerned that she's in Oliver's office. "Who _will_ tell me?"

The man—vampire, Claire reminds herself; it isn't that hard to make the distinction with people like Oliver—sighs and shrugs slightly. "I haven't the faintest idea. Nobody who will sit in the café will tell you; they're all too scared of someone who's much more powerful than them. But perhaps your dear friend, the _Founder_, will tell you," he suggests, his voice dripping with sarcasm as he mentions Amelie. "Or, best yet, why not hear it from the horse's mouth, so to speak?"

"Who does this refer to?" Claire asks immediately, having caught onto what Oliver said. "Obviously it's about me, but _who _else? What is it about?"

Oliver shakes his head, the sarcastic smile spreading even wider. "That isn't my place to tell you, little Claire. I've told you too much already. Now go before I forget that you're useful to this town; I'm hungry."

Shivering, Claire leaves the office in a hurry, almost forgetting to pick up Myrnin's drink (and doughnut) on the way out. She's too scared—and angry—to remember the basics about her life.

ii.

"The vampires are muttering about me," Claire confesses to Myrnin as she sits down on the sofa in his laboratory. The hum of the machines is a friendly one, something that she associates completely with the laboratory, as is the familiar creaking of this seat which has seem better days.

Myrnin freezes for a moment, his back oddly stiff to Claire's eyes, and she presumes that he must be considering the measurements of the chemicals he's using in his current experiment. "They are?" he replies, sounding almost too nonchalant. "What about?"

Shrugging, Claire stretches out on the soda, determined to stretch out drinking this coffee so that she can just sit down for a short time and talk to Myrnin. Whilst she loves coming here to work, she loves coming here to talk to Myrnin; conversations like these make her realise just how much she relies on him. He's the only friend she has outside of the Glass House, which is something she needs sometimes, when internal discussion isn't going to solve her worries.

"I haven't a clue," she sighs as she responds, taking a deep drink of her now-lukewarm drink. "Oliver wouldn't tell me—he's too much of a pussy to—and so I'm off to see Amelie this evening. I just hope that I haven't been put on _another_ vampire's hit list. I don't think that I can cope with the drama again." She laughs slightly as she remembers the issue with Morley and how she traded lives in order to get them out of Morganville, realising that that wasn't exactly a hit list—but it's the closest she's ever come to it.

"Hm, are you sure that she's going to tell you?" Myrnin questions, his back relaxing slightly. "She's been busy recently, and what makes you think that she listens to the vampire grapevine?"

Claire shrugs. "I don't know if she'll even see me; it's a long shot, I know. But it's the only thing I've got. Anyway, she owes me; how many times have I saved this town?"

"More times than I can count," Myrnin says softly, barely audibly to Claire's ears. He then mutters something else that she can't hear, but she's certain that it's something that ought to make her blush—so she does. "Now, Claire, that's more than enough about vampires and their silly discussions about you: perhaps they're all discussing how jealous they are of your lovely backpack—where on _earth_ did you get it?" Myrnin turns to face her suddenly, his face alight as he motions towards the bag she borrowed from Eve this morning. It's black and covered in silver skull-and-crossbones, something that she never expected Myrnin to be interested in.

As she explains the story to Myrnin, Claire relaxes. She's never more relaxed than she is here, where there are no expectations (other than making sure that Myrnin doesn't do anything that either destroys Morganville, or alerts the FBI that there's something other than humans in the town) or rules that she needs to follow to be socially correct. Here, so long as she's friends with Myrnin, she's fine.

(Little does she realise that things are changing in here, and perhaps the word _friends_ won't be enough very soon—for either of them.)

iii.

Amelie's voice is cool as she calls for Claire to enter her office. Having gotten Myrnin to dial her a portal, Claire headed straight for the Founder, deciding that she wants everything to be over with today, rather than waiting for tomorrow for an appointment. What she said to Myrnin is true: for everything she's done for Morganville, Amelie owes her.

Whether the Founder will recognise this is a different matter entirely.

"Um, hi," Claire says awkwardly as she enters Amelie's office, struggling with the door. She attempts to spend as little time here as possible, therefore she never remembers that the door's made from the heaviest wood possible and needs to be shoved for her to open it.

Amelie's eyebrow lifts slightly at Claire's choice of greeting, her hand motioning for Claire to take a seat. "I am _so_ pleased that you deign to come to my office and entertain me, Claire; your schedule must be so full that you had barely a second spare for the Founder. This is greatly appreciated." Her ice-cold voice drips with sarcasm, something which Claire rarely experiences with the Founder, and her gaze isn't much better: in fact, it's probably warmer standing in the Glass House's freezer than looking into Amelie's eyes.

"I wanted to ask you something." Claire's hesitant as she speaks—whether she really wants to know is a doubt that's suddenly rising within her—but she still takes a seat before Amelie. "It's important, and Oliver told me that you'd be able to tell me what it is."

The coolness of Amelie's glare disappears suddenly, being replaced with an almost humour. "Did he now?" she questions, looking into the far right hand corner of the room. "I shall have to have words with my sub-ordinate, discuss with him that I am not to do what he deigns not to do; however, yes, he is right. I do know what you are referring to."

"What have I done that's so bad that they're all _gossiping_ about it in Common Grounds?" Claire half yells, unable to stop herself from doing it. "I don't remember killing anyone recently, or, or saying that vampires smell bad, or _anything_ that should have them all staring at me as though I've done something awful."

Amelie suddenly looking much more kind, something which sends the fear waves running through Claire at an even higher tempo. When Amelie feels that something is wrong, it must be; she's one of the people who doesn't care if it doesn't affect her—not unless it is something so completely diabolical that the person will be destroyed.

Claire decides she may as well prepare for imminent doom.

"You must understand that these…these are not my feelings to share," Amelie says softly. "I am telling you because the others know—they can tell, it's really rather obvious—and I would much rather the news came from me than one of them. Before I do tell you, however, are you sure that you wish to know?"

Nodding, Claire says, "yes. Otherwise, I'll find out later, as you said, and it'll just be a load of garbage. But whose feelings _are_ they?"

Amelie merely gives Claire a look, one that suggests that she already knows the answer, which deep down Claire feels she does. "You know quite well who: Myrnin." She takes a pause, gauging Claire's carefully neutral reaction, before continuing. "It isn't that he has said anything; someone else noticed how he observes certain situations and how he responds to threats which do not pose any danger to himself, and they decided to spread the information. It is something that I noticed many months ago, but deigned not to tell; it is not as though it appears to be reciprocated, after all."

A sinking feeling inside Claire makes her certain she already knows what Amelie's going to tell her. Her insides are splitting, half of her deeply desiring to hear this information; the other part of her, however, wants to run away, to run and confront Myrnin, to tell him that she never wants to see him again, and to be in Shane's arms. "Tell me."

"I did warn you," Amelie says, slightly harshly, before she explains. "Myrnin is in love with you—not just your brain and your intellect, as he originally attempted to argue, even to himself, but with _all_ of you. He needs you in his life, and his deductions are that you reciprocate this need, though, due to him neglecting to share his feelings, you remain in the dark about how you romantically view him. There, you have it: do not say that I do not comply with your wishes for information, Claire."

Shock rises within Claire with every word issued from Amelie's mouth, and she finds herself on her feet without realising she stood up. "No," she whispers, a noise of pain and anguish. "No, that _can't_ be it. It just _can't_."

Amelie has enough time to call for Claire to stop before she leaves the room, but she doesn't—not that Claire would have listened, anyway.

Now, she needs to go to Myrnin and explain that she doesn't love him, not at all.

(This will break her completely, but it needs to be done. She's always known this, deep down; it's just she would have preferred not to have to choose.)

iv.

Claire storms through the portal, a flurry of rage and agony, and Myrnin seems surprised to see her again, until he notices the expression on her face. Then, his own turns to one of resignation.

"She told you." He states it rather than phrasing it as a question: he already knows the answer. "Claire, let me explain—"

"_No_!" she erupts, a blaze of the human ability to be completely broken and beautiful at the same time; she's boiling with anger at the same time as drowning in her own despair in the way that only humans can manage. "Don't try and explain to me that you _love_ me and that the entire vampire population of this town knows about it! They've been whispering about it, I told you, and you didn't even care! You could have told me how you felt, but you preferred to watch me fall into pieces, paranoid!"

"I didn't want that to happen," Myrnin replies quietly, taking a step away from the table with chemicals haphazardly thrown upon it. "I just…I didn't want to give this up by telling you something that would cause you to feel the need to run as far from me as possible. You must believe me, Claire; I never wanted to hurt you."

She's tearing apart inside, part of her wanting to fall to her knees and sob, part of her wanting to run as far from the equally broken man as possible and never look back, and as the rips begin to grow in their size, the fissures in whatever composure remains become more permanent, she retorts angrily, "I come here for _what_? If you actually knew me, you would know that I come here to learn about science—_that's_ all. I don't care about you, don't care about whatever idiotic thing you're worrying about this time. I care about the science, and that's it." She's being deliberately harsh, she knows, but she wants to hurt him as badly as he's hurt her. "I come here to discover what I want to know, and then I leave; have you noticed how I come and go as I please, rather than when you want me to? You don't control me, Myrnin, and I don't care about you at all."

She takes a step backwards from Myrnin, realising that she hasn't addressed one of the major issues that had been raised. "As for being in love, you're right, I am in love—with _Shane_. I love Shane, not you, and I never, _ever_ will care for you. Ever since you gave me the crystals, I knew that you don't really care about me, not really; I'm someone who can learn from you, can carry on your work if you ever falter—that's it. You don't care about me. And you've done your job well: I could come in here and work without you being here—and I wouldn't give a _damn_ that you weren't here."

"One day, when you walk down those stairs, I am not going to be here," Myrnin says in a voice that sounds as though he's barely holding back tears. "One day, you're going to walk into this laboratory and realise that you _don't_ just come here for the science, for the knowledge; you come here for _me_ as well. You come here because you want someone who's like you, someone who understands you, someone who completes you.

"Yet you go home every night pretending that you're in love with Shane, that you're desperately happy with him, that you only come to me to learn. You're lying; you know inside that you are. Everything that I have taught you is basic to you now, I'm now learning from you as much as you are from me."

Claire shakes her head, trying desperately not to listen to any of the words coming out of Myrnin's mouth because she doesn't want to hear them; she doesn't want to hear what he's saying because deep down, she knows it's the truth; underneath the anger, she knows that he would never lie to her. "You're wrong," she whispers, wiping her eyes before the forming tears drip down her cheeks. She doesn't want it to be obvious when she leaves that she's been crying. "I love coming here…but I love Shane…and I don't love you."

Myrnin's smile breaks her heart into tiny pieces with its melancholy nature but his eyes hurt her the most. They're haunted, deep, dark fissures into his soul that betray far too much about him: in there amongst the insanity is the heartache, and amongst the heartache is the insanity. His disease is so completely an integral part of him, so much part of who he is, that to fall in love with Myrnin the man is to fall in love with Myrnin the monster.

"You'll see," he whispers, a tear rolling down his pallid skin as the words leave his mouth. "When you come down here and find me gone, find no trace of me left as though I have never been here at all, you'll see that what I am telling you is true." He flashes across the room, closing the gap between them, and Claire shivers as he whispers in her ear. "You'll realise that you need me as I need you—but it'll be too late. I'll be gone…forever."

His breath tickles her skin, its coolness welcome against the feverish heat of her head, but the influence is gone as soon as she realises she needs it. His words, however, don't have the same sort of time span in her mind; their longevity will haunt her for the rest of time, she fears. But that's something she'll have to put up with.

She's in love with Shane, after all, not Myrnin—and as he said, she can learn science from anyone. Why does it need be him?

"We'll see," she says as strongly as she can manage, taking a step backwards from Myrnin as she does so. The look on his face is fleeting—anger followed by fear followed by the most gut-wrenching heartache she's ever seen on another being's face—and the careful neutrality following it breaks Claire apart more than the emotions. "But for now, Myrnin, this is goodbye. I can't carry on working here, not now that this has happened."

She gathers her things wordlessly, the atmosphere in the laboratory making her want to split into two separate entities, one to stay and one to go, but she resists. That would be impossible, and anyway, she's already made her decision: she's going back to Shane.

Just before she leaves, however, she hears Myrnin's voice. "Did you even tell him about what the others were saying in the café? Does he even know that you were worried?"

The answer is no, but Claire doesn't give Myrnin the satisfaction of knowing this; he'll know anyway, from her lack of response.

Instead, Claire simply leaves.

v.

Shane's arms are where she spends most of the next week. She pretends it's because she's ill—a _stomach bug_, apparently, which explains why she runs out of the room at odd intervals and gives a loose explanation as to why her eyes are red-rimmed—but really, it's because she feels she needs to. He was her choice, and she needs to clarify in her own mind that he was the right one.

He doesn't seem to notice the internal struggle that's going on inside of her, and seems more focused on pressing his lips against hers, or wrapping his hands in her hair. He doesn't care about her brain, doesn't care about her development, and whilst that's a relief in a way, it's irritating in others. All Shane wants is her and her personality, and whilst that was what she thought she wanted, it's not everything.

She wants her brain to be appreciated, too.

But she's made her decision, and this is where she'll stay—with Shane, in his arms, until the end of time. Or, at least, that's her hope.

(Across town, Myrnin's packing up his bags, having been given permission by Amelie to leave Morganville for six months.)

vi.

She stays away for five weeks.

Unable to resist going to the laboratory—to get her favourite pen, she quantifies the decision in her mind—Claire heads down the familiar road towards Granma Day's house, having decided that if she encounters Myrnin, she'll leave straight away.

As she walks, she realises that she's strangely happy that she never kissed Myrnin—or, rather, that he never kissed her. It makes her realise that she can't ever consider missing what she never had, because Myrnin was never hers, just like she was never his.

Her lack of going to the laboratory has been explained to Shane as a need to use more modern equipment, something she's managed to arrange at the university. She barely spends any time there, the clinical nature of the sterile, organised room too much for her to handle, so she spends an inordinate amount of time in the library, making notes on subjects that she's yet to study in university but learnt in her first month with Myrnin. It bores her more than she can explain, but the silence here is strangely pleasant; there are no vampires who still give her funny looks because they _know_ how Myrnin feels about her and how she no longer sees him.

But now, she's ran out of excuses not to go back to the laboratory. She's no longer angry with Myrnin; she feels lost without him, and losing the anger made her realise that. It made her accept that she loves him, just as she loves Shane, a fact that she now can say aloud without wanting to burn down the world. It just hurts a little more every time she says it, because to be happy with one of them, she needs to break the other irrevocably.

"Hello?" Claire calls as she reaches the shack which marks Myrnin's laboratory, the door strangely padlocked shut. It makes no issue for Claire, as she's able to climb through the huge holes at the side of the official 'door', but it's strange. Myrnin's never cared for security before; why now?

The silence of the library is echoed as she takes steps down the stairs, having to use her phone as a light in the impenetrable darkness. It's dangerous down here, in a town full of vampires, but Claire can't stop herself making her way down the familiar wobbly stairs, avoiding the broken part of step seven and skipping the bottom step completely; it's too quiet.

It takes her a whole minute to realise why it's so quiet; it isn't just that Myrnin isn't incessantly chattering—something obvious, given that he obviously isn't here—but it's that the machines which are permanently on…aren't.

Claire finds the light switch in the corner of the room and flicks it, waiting the few moments it takes for the ancient electricity system to boost up to illuminate the laboratory. The sight shocks her: everything is covered in white sheets, everything orderly, and nothing that is remarkably outlandish lying around.

It looks just like the laboratories in the university—with one difference.

It still has Myrnin's spark about it.

A tear rolls down Claire's cheek as she recalls what he said: one day, he won't be here anymore, and the laboratory won't be the same. He was right. He's not here _now_, and whilst she could quite easily learn here, she doesn't want to. It isn't the same without Myrnin, isn't the same without the man that she needed in her life—she may not have needed him for romantic reasons, but she needed him for all the other ones, all the ones which she considers to be more important.

(Deep down, she needed him for the romance, too.)

_"One day, you're going to walk into this laboratory and realise that you don't just come here for the science, for the knowledge; you come here for me as well. You come here because you want someone who's like you, someone who understands you, someone who completes you."_

His words haunt her as she walks through the laboratory, looking for something, _anything_ that's Myrnin, anything that could make her believe that he's here with her.

There's a piece of paper on one of the tables in the far corner, her preferred one, and the fact that he knew to place something there makes Claire realise that he knew so much more about her than she ever realised. The paper is folded over, and Claire unfolds it slowly, hesitant to reveal its contents.

It's short.

_I knew you'd come back._

_The place is yours until May—if you want it, that is._

Claire tucks the piece of paper into her pocket and quickly sprints from the laboratory, not even turning off the power in her haste to leave. He knew that she would come, and he gave her what she's missed the second most after himself: the laboratory, the place where her love for science was honed into skills and knowledge and _brilliance_.

(She can't take it, and she doesn't think that she ever will be able to.)

vii.

Months pass, and Claire tries to block out the day that she visited the laboratory, attempts to pretend that it was all a dream. Immediately after, she went to the university lab and ran some experiments, thinking that it was the familiarity of the university that made her see parallels in Myrnin's unorganised place of work.

That's where she's been ever since, spending more and more time researching the differences between the vampire race and the human race, attempting to create a profile—for what, she doesn't know (and she has to stop herself thinking that _Myrnin_ would know what they could do with it) and she doubts she ever will, but it's something to do that makes her feel closer to Myrnin in his absence.

Shane barely features in her life at the minute, something which has led to numerous arguments over the past months; he misses her being at home, doesn't understand that science requires her complete dedication—and once again, Claire has to stop herself thinking how Myrnin would understand her concentration and focus on the experiment. Romance doesn't interest her as much as understanding why something is happening, something Shane doesn't understand, and they've come closer to calling things off in Myrnin's absence than when he was around, something which amuses Claire. Shane was right about how Myrnin felt about her, but that couldn't break them up.

Now Myrnin's gone and Shane and herself are destroying themselves by their own efforts.

(Sometimes, though Claire won't admit it to herself, she locks her room door and rereads the letter Myrnin left her, over and over again, because she feels closer to him in those few words than she does with the physical version of Shane.)

Amelie sends her a letter on the seventeenth of May directly to the university laboratory rather than to the house, and it sends an ice-cold wave of fear through Claire.

_Myrnin is scheduled to return tomorrow, and I feel that he will keep his word. It is, of course, up to you what you do with this information; I merely thought you would want to know._

_-Amelie_

Claire has to use the portal to get home in a hurry, desperate to be reunited with Myrnin's letter for some strange reason, and it surprises Shane as she appears in the living room: she hasn't used it since Myrnin left.

"Why are you using that thing again?" he demands to know, but Claire rolls her eyes. She doesn't want another argument, not today, not now she knows that Myrnin's coming back. Why this makes a difference she doesn't know because she doesn't love either of them more, so she isn't going to drastically change her life by announcing her love for Myrnin.

"Because I want to," is her response, but that isn't good enough for Shane.

"You're in love with him, aren't you?" Shane snaps as she tries to walk past, his tone angry. "You've been moping for six months; you barely come near me anymore, you spend all your time working…you want him, don't you? You wish you'd chosen him before, because he _understands_ you."

Fury spreads through Claire at Shane's words, akin to how it did six months ago, as she learned about Myrnin's love for her. "_Of course_ I'm love with him, that's why I'm with _you_, isn't it!" she half screams, dropping Amelie's letter on the sofa accidentally as she uses her arms to further her explanation. "I love a man who could destroy me at any point, a man who doesn't seem to care about me, a man whose interests are completely different to mine, a man who doesn't care what I do, a man who…a man who…" she trails off at this point, having realised something.

With the exception of the first point, with that even tangible, she isn't describing Myrnin: she's describing Shane—not exactly, admittedly, but it's a closer match for Shane than Myrnin.

"A man who what, Claire?" Shane raises his eyebrows, noticing the letter on the sofa. "A man who loves you and is open about it—so open that he has to flee from the town because he's scared that the girl's _boyfriend_ will kill him. Is that true?"

Before Claire can respond, Shane's reached across the sofa to grab the letter from Amelie, a movement that Claire can't stop. It only takes him a few seconds to read the letter. "I guess this proves it. You need Myrnin and you're back to decide how to sort things out with him."

"No, I'm _not_!" Claire yells, kicking out at the sofa in anger. She is, though, and she knows that it's probably obvious to Shane.

He isn't shouting any more. "You are." He shrugs ever so slightly and tosses the letter back to Claire, refusing to let himself cry. "We're over and I don't care what you say; I know that at least part of you loves him, and even if it's less dominant, I can't be with a girl who loves a bloodsucker. You can deny that you love him—maybe you might feel that way, I don't know—but in the end, it will be Myrnin and Claire. Claire and Shane aren't endgame. I know that now."

Shane walks out of the room, leaving a girl behind who doesn't know whether to laugh or cry, to scream or be silent—a girl who doesn't know if the traditional picture of good and evil is the same with the human and vampire in her life.

viii.

Claire slips into the laboratory—_his_ laboratory—at three o'clock in the morning on the seventeenth of May, a slip of paper in her hand. She makes her way towards Myrnin's favourite table, the one behind hers, in the dark, not bothering to turn the lights on. A six month long absence hasn't even begun to affect her knowledge of the laboratory and where things are—the clean-up when he left, however, may.

It's a short note on the piece of paper, but it's enough to convey her feelings and thoughts—she hopes.

_I'll be there at 9am with coffee and doughnuts. You need a lot of help getting this place back into its usual state of disrepair._

Claire feels a presence behind her as she sets down the note, and knows that Myrnin's there; she doesn't know how she knows it's him…she just does. She was able to tell when he was near before all of this happened—evidently she didn't lose that ability either.

"I'll see you in the morning, boss," she says to thin air as she returns to the portal, before blowing a kiss into the darkness.

There's no response, but as she shuts the portal door, Claire's certain that she hears a chuckle that she's missed—Myrnin's chuckle.

Climbing into bed, Claire knows that, really, she isn't depressed that things are over with Shane; it was falling apart anyway, and neither of them wanted to admit it, not when she chose him over any future with Myrnin. Now, she isn't falling into Myrnin's arms; she doesn't want that, not really, and she knows he doesn't want it either.

She's back to being his apprentice, back to spending an insane amount of time with him to learn about things that her professors can only dream of (and most of them probably can't even manage that)…and whilst she's certain that she'll end up confessing her love for him at some point, she knows that today isn't the right day. It's too soon, too rushed, and she doesn't feel it in every part of her body; it's just her heart now, and part of her mind.

The future will bring something different for them, however—but they're together again now, with the ability to _have_ a future together, and that's what matters.

* * *

as i've said on something before, if you favourite without reviewing, i'll write ridiculous amounts of angsty-Clyrnin and PM you them, so please review.

any feedback on this would be appreciated (especially as it's not 'standard' clyrnin)


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